Track 7 Sunday Morning
“Sunday Morning”
I WOKE UP the next morning alone in E’s bed. I wasn’t necessarily surprised by his absence, but I was nervous to leave his room without an escort. Unfortunately, I couldn’t wait long—I had to pee, and the only bathroom I knew of was down the hall and to the right, past the other bedrooms.
I made it to the bathroom without running into anyone, but when I exited and heard the clanging of pots and pans in the kitchen, it felt rude to hide away.
I made my way over, and sure enough, there was E’s mom, cooking Sunday morning breakfast with the brightest smile I’d ever seen.
She greeted me like she had known me forever, when she hadn’t met me at all.
It was the warmest welcome I’d ever experienced as an unwelcome guest—and I had extensive experience being an unwelcome guest, in my own home.
“Good morning, sweetie. Would you like some coffee?” she asked, her voice warm and inviting.
“Oh, no, thank you. Is E, um… Is Emanuele—”
“He’ll be out in just a second. Come, have a seat. I made you some breakfast.”
She placed a plate of pancakes and bacon in front of me with a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice.
It was delicious—a hangover’s cure, and I think she knew it.
She refilled my glass and my plate and sat with me as I ate again.
She talked with me easily, asking about school and friends, and what I did for fun.
She was impressed that I liked to write and sing and told me how beautifully creative I must be.
She was the epitome of what a mom should be and made me feel loved after just a few words.
Her lighthearted, angelic nature reminded me of Mother Goose, if Mother Goose were a gorgeous, smiling thirty-something-year-old.
E emerged from the other side of the house with a big smile. He was wearing a white T-shirt and dark blue jeans, and he was barefoot with his hair still damp from the shower. He looked like a Calvin Klein model.
“Morning, Ma. Morning, Syd,” he said, so naturally, as if greeting me in his kitchen was something he did every morning, and I liked how it felt.
“Good morning, my son.” She smiled at him as he kissed her on the cheek, then she turned to me. “Will you be joining us for church, Sydney?” she asked.
“Oh, uh…” I looked down at my overly plain attire—black leggings and an oversized tan sweater draped over my cream camisole. I looked at E. “I don’t have any clothes.”
She smiled warmly. “That’s okay, honey. The Lord doesn’t care what you’re wearing.”
It was oddly comforting.
A short while later, we arrived at a plain white building.
It was…underwhelming, to say the least. I’m not sure what I was expecting—maybe a big cathedral like I used to see in New York—but this wasn’t that.
It was just a structure, like a house, if a house had a large parking lot.
There were no huge columns or dramatic statues.
The west wall of the house-church had three stained glass windows set between clear ones that made the light pour in beautifully, magically.
That, and the one wooden cross, was as churchy as it got, which made it feel more welcoming somehow.
E’s parents said hello to the others they knew—which, like E, seemed to be everyone—and E walked me into the chapel, grabbing two end seats in the third row from the front.
“Where are your sisters?” I asked, realizing they weren’t with us, nor were they home this morning.
“They come early and volunteer with the kids during service. We’ll see them after.”
“Oh.” I shifted uncomfortably. I was suddenly intimidated by the level of involvement his family had at church. They didn’t just attend; they were full-on participants, and I realized how much I didn’t belong.
E sensed my discomfort and squeezed my hand, snapping my attention to him. He winked at me, and, just like he knew it would, it instantly calmed my nerves.
Minutes later, four band members accompanied the stage along with two vocalists.
The music began, and suddenly we were attendants at the best alternative rock concert I’d ever been to.
The drums tapped to the beat of my soul, and the lyrics proclaimed words my heart never spoke but knew so well.
The energy was high and uplifting, but I found myself overwhelmed, a knot forming in my throat at the lightness in my chest.
The pastor came to the stage—in sneakers, jeans, and a T-shirt, by the way—and thanked the band before opening with a prayer. E leaned forward, dipping his head as he propped his elbows on his knees and folded his hands before him. I was mesmerized.
The service was beautiful. Encouraging. Revitalizing. It seemed more like motivational speaking with positive reinforcement than a religious cult, like my mom always described it. But there was something that had me questioning.
“E,” I whispered, and he moved his ear closer to me. “Why do they keep saying your name?”
He smiled and swung his arm behind my chair as he brought his lips to my ear. My body came alive at his breath on my neck, and I did my best to calm my nerves, if only for being in church.
“Emanuele is Italian,” he explained. “Pronounced E-man-wellé, but we just say ‘Emanuele’. It’s also Hebrew. It means ‘God is with us.’”
I was stunned. Shocked by yet another double meaning that fit so well. One that seemed to be the very embodiment of life and E and everything around me. God was with us. He was with me. He had to be there—otherwise, how could I have found E?
E’s mom met us in the entryway after church had ended. She didn’t ask my thoughts or how I felt about the service. She just gave me a hug and told me she was glad I came. Then she turned to E.
“Still baking today, right?” E nodded. “Thank you, son.” She gave him a kiss on the cheek and did the same for me.
“We’re getting lunch and then running some errands.
Order pizza if you get hungry. Or have pie for lunch.
” She smiled, wide and warm before exiting the door to meet E’s dad out front. I turned to E with a questioning look.
“You bake?” First church, now food? The man was full of surprises. The corner of his lips curved up in a smile. Warm brown eyes poured into mine like melted caramel.
“Only on Sunday Mornings.” He winked, and I felt my cheeks warm. He chuckled at my response and shook his head.
“Come on, Betty Crocker.” He held the door open for me as I walked through.
“I’m not Betty. You’re Betty,” I recovered, but he only laughed harder
Forty minutes later, E’s kitchen smelled of sugar and cinnamon, and was covered in flour and bowls of sliced peaches.
I watched him as he rolled out the dough alongside me, then gathered it onto the pin before laying it out over the glass dish.
We were working in unison—he on the pie his Mom would bring to bible study, I on the one we’d eat that day.
I had only made peach cobbler once before, with my grandmother when I was seven.
My parents sent us to her for four weeks that summer.
She rented a beach house on Long Beach Island and promised us a summer to remember—and it was.
My sisters and I were in all our mermaid glory.
We spent every day at the beach or on the bay, went on bike rides, and watched fireworks at Fantasy Island Park.
Every night, we’d choose a dessert and Gram would whip it up with us.
Kat and Ren gave up on the baking early on, but Gram and I—we were tied at the hip.
“Okay, baby girl,” she said as she tied the apron around my back. “Nice and slow. We don’t want to pour all the sugar at once.” I followed her instructions, slow and steady. “That’s right,” she said softly. “A little at a time. Just like falling in love.”
My head tilted but my eyes stayed focused on the task at hand. “Why can’t you fall in love quickly?”
“Mmm, too much too fast can be too sweet. Make your belly hurt.”
I wrinkled my nose. “But I like sweet things. I like all the stuff we make.”
“Oh, me too, honey,” she laughed. “But love is better when it takes its time. When it’s sprinkled little by little, like this sugar here.
” She cupped my wrist as she stopped my pour.
“The flavors are all there. Now, we let them sit. Let them melt into something beautiful… and delicious!” She tapped my nose with a flour-covered finger and I giggled.
“Just remember, honey: never be afraid to experiment in the kitchen. You never know where it’ll lead you.”
I nodded as if I understood exactly what she meant, but the weight of the memory suddenly felt a bit heavier than it had before.
“What are you thinking about?” E asked with a warm grin.
I smiled up at him. “My grandma.” He nodded.
“Grandmas are great.”
“The best.” I felt my heart, warm and big, in my chest.
“My grandma taught my mom how to bake,” he said. “And my mom taught me. Said it would keep me out of the trouble my idle hands would find.” He grinned at me with a crooked smile. “I was a bit mischievous as a kid.”
“I couldn’t tell,” I said with an arch of my brow, sarcasm curving my lips, but I meant it.
E was the most well-rounded person I knew.
I could never see him getting into trouble, though I knew he must have when I considered the friends he sometimes kept and the respect he always received.
Not to mention the way he always knew exactly what to do to avoid the cops we’d see at times.
I looked over to E’s dish, where he was piling peaches like he was building a tower. He added more filling to mine. “Hey! You’re putting too much in.”
He looked at me over his shoulder with a smirk. “Pies can never have too much filling. It’s the law.”
“It’s not the law. And it’s not a pie. It’s a cobbler. It has ratios.”
“Who cares about ratios?” He mocked with a sly grin and a wrinkled brow. I hiked my shoulders up in defense.
“They’re rules!” He licked his lips and his eyes narrowed as he leaned down toward me.
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you? Some rules are meant to be broken.”
His deep voice vibrated through me, and settled heavily between my ribs.
It was a cliché I’d heard a thousand times, but somehow this felt different.
Deeper. His eyes were steady on mine. My mind went blank, and I struggled to find something, anything to say in return.
E bit his bottom lip, pulling it in with a small satisfied smile.
“That mischief is still itching, huh?” I averted my gaze to my dish as I tried to recover, but his stood on me, that knowing smirk set in place. I tried to sound steadier than I felt. “You know, if this cobbler ends up a mess, I’m blaming your ungovernable methods.”
He chuckled. “Come on. Let’s get these in the oven and clean up.”
An hour later, our desserts were ready, and I hated to admit it, but E’s over-filled, double-crusted cobbler looked exceptionally better than mine.
“Your pie looks like something Martha Stewart would feature on the front cover of her spring edition.” E laughed.
“It’s not a pie, it's a cobbler,” he teased.
I narrowed my eyes at him with a smirk. He grabbed the Bryers’s vanilla bean ice cream from the freezer and handed me a spoon.
“Doesn’t matter how it looks. It’s how it tastes that's important.” I nodded in agreement.
“Shall we?” he asked with raised brows. We tapped our spoons together in a cheer, and dug into the warm filling a’la mode.
It was the best peach cobbler I had ever tasted.
E drove me home later that evening, and I sat in my room for a long time, reliving the previous twenty-four hours like I’d forget them if I didn’t run through every detail—my excitement to see E over spending time with Enzo, my argument with Enzo that left me stranded with no way home…
how it turned out to be the best night and morning of my life thus far.
I kept playing it all back. E’s rich voice in the dark, the warmth of his body next to mine, the way his eyes lingered as if he was memorizing me there in his bed. The morning at church. The pie.
I didn’t know the trajectory those few short hours would take, but I knew they were, once again, the start of something big. Like the earth’s first rumble before an earthquake.
Something had changed. Not just between me and Enzo or me and E, but between me and everything. It terrified me, but it also made me feel awakened. I felt alive in a way I had never felt before.
The thing about earthquakes, though—they tend to leave horrific rubble in their wake. And once they begin, there’s nothing you can do to stop them.